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“Right. Uh, probably not.”
She laughs. “Where are you today?”
“I'm here.”
She rolls her eyes but is still smiling.
Some of the pressure in my chest eases.
In less than an hour, I'm going to get down on one knee in front of everyone we love and ask Blaire to trust me with the rest of her life.
The woman who somehow found a way to love me even after I gave her every reason not to.
The woman who complains that I load the dishwasher wrong but refuses to explain what the right way supposedly is.
The woman I want beside me when I'm seventy and bitching about my knees.
The woman who’s choosing to stay by my side when I might have a kid on the way with an entirely different person.
My hand drifts toward my pocket again.
“Your phone sliding weird again?”
I look at her.
She's smiling, one brow raised. “You should get better pants.”
I squeeze her hand as we keep walking toward the top. “I like these pants. They just have slippery pockets.”
We finally turn the final bend and the trailhead opens up to the cliffside. Sunlight pours across the overlook, the whole valley stretched out below us—gold, green, endless. The wind shifts just enough to catch Blaire’s hair and lift it off her shoulders.
Chance claps his hands once. “Alright, water break!”
Her family starts peeling off one by one—spreading out, wandering just far enough to give us space but close enough to witness everything.
My heart is beating so hard I think I might vibrate out of my shoes. My hands feel slick. My knees feel weak.
“Teddy!” Richard calls, pulling Theo away for this moment, giving me a subtle nod. “Come see these flowers.”
“Hey Blaire?” I say softly, stepping toward her.
She turns to me—and her brows knit instantly. “You look pale. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I choke out.
I swallow. My throat is dry as dust. But I force myself to breathe—slow, steady. The ring in my pocket weighs a ton.
“What’s wrong?” she whispers, looking around like there might be some threat she hasn’t seen yet.
I take her hands. My palms are shaking, and she feels it.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I manage. “Everything’s right. More right than it’s been in years.”
Her lips part just slightly.
I drop to one knee right there on the overlook, the wind tugging at my sweater. My free hand fumbles in my pocket until I get the ring out, it catches the sunlight, sending rainbows in every direction.
“Blaire,” I start, my voice cracking under the weight of everything I’ve carried. “I bought this ring five years ago. I’ve rehearsed a thousand versions of this in my head, and every single one felt wrong, but I can’t live another second without saying this.”
